


to live by

by mageswolf



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, dark themes, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5791657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mageswolf/pseuds/mageswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You have no past. You have no future. You have no name. You have no emotions. All that exists is the mission.”<br/>Sai had lived by those words, his constant mantra, crushing any doubt that crossed his mind. <br/>But the thing was, those words weren't true anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to live by

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short introspective thing. I love Sai a lot. As always, critique is welcome.

_“You have no past. You have no future. You have no name. You have no emotions. All that exists is the mission.”_

Sai had lived by those words, his constant mantra, crushing any doubt that crossed his mind. He killed dozens in the name of those words, of the cause behind them. He had heard them from commanders and fellow soldiers countless times.

But, the thing of it was, he did have a past. He had a past in a tiny hut in the heart of the forest where Root children were reared and raised. He had a past in scraps of paper and drawings of Shin, in each time he was called “little brother”. He had a past in watching his fellow Root children be cut down in droves, crawling through blood to survive the night of testing. He had, despite all attempts of Danzo’s remaining loyalists, a future.

In every day he woke up in his own room, in his own apartment, not in a crowded dormitory. In being able to turn down missions, he had a future of less time on the field and more time in the village library, in guarding Kakashi’s newfound reign, and in being ranted at by Naruto over bowls of ramen (which Naruto had been absolutely, irrevocably, horrified that Sai had never tried. He took him for his birthday, which he had also been horrified that Sai did not have. He decided that Sai’s birthday should be the day he became a member of team seven. Sai agreed, simply because Naruto seemed to place a great emphasis on having everyone he knew crowd into his tiny apartment for any occasion he deemed special.)

(Sai didn’t mind.)

He didn’t know his name, didn’t know what the name he had been given by his mother, if he had ever had one. He didn’t remember his mother’s face. Sakura had asked him, once, if he knew what his name had been before Root. He remembered being Training Unit 217, and he remember being Little Brother, and he remembered being Designate Squad Leader 375 Special Rank Beta. He didn’t remember his name, but he thought that being named Sai was a good thing to be. He liked it better then all his other titles. It was his, after all.

Sai did his best with emotions. He found that smiling had begun to become more natural the more he tried it, being able to do so naturally rather than forcing himself to when he felt the social situation dictated he do so. He still found it exhausting at times, but Yamato said that was fine, that “It happens to all of us, when we first get out. Don’t worry too much Sai.” (He cried for the first time in seven years when he took the special investigators and the rest of team seven to see the interior of Root headquarters. His chakra clearance had gotten them into previously sealed rooms. They entered a large chamber with metal lined walls and a floor of a packed, grey, dusty material.)

(Sai had fallen to his knees in the ashes of his brother and every other operative he had watched die and felt his body wrack and convulse with untameable sobs. Sakura and Naruto had taken him home and held his hands until he stopped shivering, and he thought that perhaps that was what a family was like.)

Sai had decided, sometime between the fourteenth time Sakura punched him in the face, and when he woke up in a medical tent after the war to Naruto, Sakura, Yamato and a very irritated Sasuke next to him, that he had a future. He had a past, however bleak it may have been. He had a name, four years old and counting, and he had feelings he still did not understand. He remembered his mantra, it still cycled in his head on and endless loop. He still fell back into it when he was neck deep in a mission and up to his elbows in blood.

But he didn’t live by it anymore.


End file.
